College One: Challenging ways to draw...

This drawing exercise was about testing how someone who thinks they cannot draw reacts towards an impromptu drawing task that challenges time-management, quick thinking and creativity. The task involved 2 people, the person who has no art background (John) had to describe 3 different objects they could see around the room, the person with the art background (being me) then had to draw what they described and then the task would be repeated vice versa. I wanted to explore the differences between the drawings and how they were described, I also wanted to demonstrate that even without drawing backgrounds, something can be produced.

John started off my describing objects. The first object he had one minute to describe and even though the outcome looks awful, it is similar to what he was describing, this being a sweeping brush. The second object which I had two minutes to draw was mean't to be a microwave but because of the way John described it, all the button features are on the opposite side to where they should be. This proven that even without art knowledge, describing something for John was difficult, he used no descriptive terminology except basic descriptive words. The third object which I had five minutes to draw is a washing machine. Even though the drawing looks like a washing machine after five minutes I expected more detail, yet it is a plain linear structure. I found myself frustrated by how little descriptive words John was using, he never said which side to draw from, how big it should be and never used detail, there was not enough time.

Now it was my turn to be descriptive and it was a lot harder than I thought. It was hard for John as well because I was using words that he did not know how to draw, even simple shapes and lengths. I had to change what I was previously saying to something simpler and this took up a lot of time which did not leave John much time to draw a response in detail.

I do not think this exercise would work as a workshop, the outcomes cannot be appreciated in any way. The time-frames could be longer to make the outcomes better but I found this exercise stressful, but I also feel like it would be a waste of time as I gained nothing from doing this exercise.